In 2003, condensed matter physicist Subir Sachdev of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his colleagues, put forward a new model called fractionalized Fermi liquid (FFL) that seemed to account for some of the properties of strange metals, including the variation of their resistance with temperature1. Unlike in the standard Fermi liquid model, the quantum mechanical spins of some electrons in the material are linked together in an FFL.

Now, in a paper published in Physical Review Letters2 on 4 October, Sachdev shows that the FFL model's characteristics match those of a type of black hole in string theory. "We're still a long way from saying string theory explains strange matter but we have hope," Sachdev says. "It's very exciting because it's a whole new perspective." He adds that he's been learning string theory at a breakneck speed.